


Scapegoat

by osprey_archer



Series: Reciprocity [22]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Victim Blaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 17:58:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3905539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After <i>Scapegoat: The Alexander Pierce Story</i> hits theaters, Steve takes Natasha on a road trip to escape the publicity.  Natasha cheers herself up with her favorite old pastime: teasing Steve about possible dates. </p>
<p>That's how Steve ends up telling her about Bucky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scapegoat

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [littlerhymes](http://archiveofourown.org/users/littlerhymes/pseuds/littlerhymes) for betaing this! 
> 
> Also, see the end of the work for some content notes.

Steve settled in at the white wicker breakfast table in the corner of the bed and breakfast, opened up his newspaper, and stifled a groan. It had been nearly two weeks since the documentary came out, but the newspaper held yet another article about _Scapegoat: The Alexander Pierce Story_. 

At least it had retreated to page six by now. 

“You’d think they’d be sick of _Scapegoat_ by now,” Natasha commented, leaning across the table to consider the outdated photo of Natasha that accompanied the story. In the photo, she looked very Russian indeed in a fur-trimmed coat with a slender cigarette in one hand: quite a contrast to the preppy nautical sweater and khaki slacks she was wearing now. 

“You’re sure you don’t want to take Tony up on his offer?” Steve asked quietly.

Tony had offered to cause an international incident – “Something ridiculous, I’m not talking about blowing anything up!” – to speed up the news cycle and get people to shut up about that damn documentary. 

Natasha settled back in her chair. She straightened the syrup bottle so it aligned perfectly with the little vase of purple asters and shook her head. “Weren’t the twins so _cute_ in our Skype call last night?” she squealed.

The owner of the B&B must be close by. Natasha made up a new persona for each stop on their road trip up the coast. This one was _sweet and bubbly suburban mom_. “We should leave them with your parents more often,” Steve said gamely.

“Aw, look at you. And you were so worried about leaving them with Gram-gram and Pop-pop for a couple of days!” 

Mrs. Shevvington, the B&B’s owner, slid two plates of applesauce cake and sausage and eggs in front of them. “Look what my mom sent me,” Natasha said, and proudly displayed a photo of a blonde girl and a red-haired boy giggling as they peered through the railing of a staircase. (“Pepper’s niece and nephew,” she told Steve last night, when he asked where she had gotten photos of their imaginary twins.) “Aren’t they the sweetest?”

Mrs. Shevvington obligingly cooed. Steve was about to settle in to listen to more cute kid stories about Peggy and Sam (“ _Seriously_?” “It will make it easy for you to remember the names!”), but instead, Mrs. Shevvington’s eye caught on the newspaper on the table. “Oh, isn’t that just awful?” she said, sighing and shaking her head. “That poor man. You know it didn’t even _occur_ to me that the World Security Council might have framed him? I feel so bad about it now.” 

Natasha and Steve’s eyes met over the applesauce cake. Then Natasha leaned forward, tapping the photo. “Chris has been telling me I look just like that Natasha Romanov girl,” she said, and pouted. “Do you think that’s true?”

“Now that’s just mean,” Mrs. Shevvington told Steve, and added reassuringly to Natasha, “You’ve got such a open, honest face, you don’t look like her at all.” 

“I’m so glad to hear it,” Natasha said. “Aren’t you just the sweetest thing? Honey, I think maybe we should come back here sometime with the twins.” 

That netted them a free cinnamon roll, still so warm that it radiated its sweet scent. The cream cheese icing melted decadently down the sides. Natasha managed two bites of it, but then her smirk slipped off her face and she slumped back in her chair and glared at it. “Let’s feed it to the seagulls,” Steve suggested. 

The seagulls tore it to pieces, shrieking. Steve and Natasha stood and watched, huddled into their coats against the cold wind blowing up off the gray ocean. 

“We can head on to the next town today if you want,” Steve offered. “No problem.”

“Nah.” Natasha put her hands in the pockets of her shapeless duffle coat. The wind blew her brown-dyed hair in her face, and she gave her head a brisk shake and began to walk along the sand. “They have buttermilk pancakes on the breakfast menu for tomorrow. Wouldn’t want to miss that.” 

It wasn’t as if they could outrun the coverage of _Scapegoat_ , anyway. _The hottest thing since_ The Da Vinci Code, _The New York Times_ called it. 

It had come out while Steve and Bucky were still in Germany, staying at a SHIELD facility hidden in an old mill in the Black Forest while Bucky recovered from his broken ribs. Outside, just audible through the walls, the waterwheel thrummed; and inside, Steve and Bucky watched a German news item about the American conspiracy documentary. Alexander Pierce, innocent patsy for the crimes of the World Security Council and Nicholas Fury. 

Steve had been furious. Bucky was indifferent. “There’s plenty of people today who still think Stalin was the best ruler Russia ever had,” he said, shifting on his hospital bed. Steve suspected that the staff had not yet mastered supersoldier dosage for painkillers. “Of course some people think Pierce is innocent, too.” 

Steve switched off the TV. But then he had nothing to distract him from Bucky, who was in pain, restless, and horny. Bucky made no suggestion that Steve could remedy the second problem by taking care of the third (of course he wouldn’t suggest that, not in a SHIELD facility), but Steve was uncomfortably aware of it. It had been easier back when sex was entirely off the table. 

He had been almost relieved when Coulson arrived. At least, until Coulson had said, “We can take it from here, Captain Rogers.”

Steve looked at Bucky. Bucky was not looking at either of them, but gazing vaguely up at the little window high in the wall of the basement room. The ferns covering it were still green: the SHIELD facility ran hot enough to protect them from the approaching winter.

“I’d rather stay here with him until his ribs have healed,” Steve said, and put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. The muscles relaxed beneath his touch. 

“I’m afraid there isn’t time for staying anywhere, Captain Rogers. He needs to come away with us on the Bus.” 

“Well,” said Steve. Bucky’s shoulder had tightened up, and Steve squeezed it. “I hope you haven’t filled my old cabin, then.” 

And so Steve had spent a week on the Bus. Skye had tracked down a streaming version of _Scapegoat_ , and they had discovered that it not only argued that Pierce was innocent, but that Natasha was a Russian sleeper agent rather than a legitimate defector. How else to explain her decision to drop the entire database of an American spy agency onto the Internet, after all?

The beep of Natasha’s phone, followed by her sudden laugh, brought Steve back to the chilly beach. She handed the phone over to him, and Steve grinned at the sight of another Russian lolcat: a cat on the verge of falling into a fishbowl, a lengthy caption written on the side. Bucky had been sending Natasha two or three a day. 

“Are you going to make me translate this one, too?” Steve asked. 

“It’s good for you,” Natasha said. “It sharpens your language skills.”

“You just like laughing at me when I come up with ridiculous translations.”

“That too,” said Natasha. She grinned, and Steve was pleased. She had been short on smiles since _Scapegoat_ came out. 

Or, rather, she had smiled plenty. But those were smokescreen smiles, worn as part of the various characters she played. Her armor for a world that had suddenly turned against her. 

Natasha continued smiling as they walked along the beach. Clamshells crunched beneath their boots. “You know,” she told Steve. “Pepper has a cute new secretary. If you’re thinking about getting back in the dating game.” 

“ _Natasha_!” he protested. “You don’t need to set me up with anyone.” _I’ve set myself up_ , he thought, but he couldn’t say it. 

“You can’t tell me you’re too busy now,” Natasha pointed out. “What about Skye?” 

“I’m pretty sure Bucky has a crush on her.” 

“Simmons, then. She’s sweet, isn’t she?”

“It’s an act,” Steve informed Natasha. “And I think Bucky has a crush on her too.” He was beginning to feel painfully uncomfortable. 

“Is there anyone on the Bus Bucky doesn’t have a crush on?” Natasha asked. The wind whipped her hair in her face again. “They’re all so attractive. Even Coulson has a kind of daddy kink thing going for him – ”

“ _Natasha_!” 

“That’s exactly the face Bucky made when I said that,” Natasha said. 

Steve could envision Bucky’s exaggeratedly horrified grimace, and at the image, his mouth outran his brain. “Actually,” he said. “You don’t need to worry about hooking me up anymore. Bucky and I – ” And then he heard what he was saying and couldn’t continue. 

Natasha’s eyes widened: a little surprised, but not at all shocked. “Oh?” she said. 

“We’ve…” His face was on fire. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. “Are you really going to make me say it?” 

“Yes, you chicken.” She was smirking. 

“We’ve been talking about having sex.” 

“Yes!” crowed Natasha, and punched the air. A flock of seagulls scattered at her shout, then swooped back in to land again. “Clint owes me dinner at Alinea.” 

“You’ve been _betting_ on this?” Steve said, and tried not to look horrified. “Has _everyone_ been – ?”

“Just us,” Natasha reassured him. “I don’t think most people have noticed. But you know me. I always know everything.” Her voice went dry. “After all, I’m a seductive Russian mastermind straight out of a James Bond novel.” 

“Are we _sure_ the director of _Scapegoat_ isn’t a Hydra agent?” Steve said. “Pierce’s daughter funded the damn thing. Maybe she’s a Hydra agent too.” 

“What did Maria call that when you put it in your letter to the _New York Times_? Libel, wasn’t it?” Natasha asked. 

“Yes,” Steve said. The letter was plenty strong without that accusation, so he had taken it out, but the omission rankled. 

“You shouldn’t have sent that letter. You know someone’s just going to write an editorial about how I’ve seduced you to my side with my slutty spy superpowers.”

“Fuck them,” Steve said.

“If you believe _Scapegoat_ , I probably have!” Natasha said brightly. 

Steve groaned. “I’m telling you. The director’s a Hydra agent.” 

“Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity,” Natasha said. “Or grief.” She shook her head and forced a smile and smacked Steve’s shoulder. “You’re just trying to distract me, Captain Rogers. All this time I’ve been trying to hook you up, and you went behind my back and found someone all on your own. C’mon. Give me the deets.” 

Steve was blushing again. But he was grinning too, kicking his foot through the sand. “I don’t kiss and tell,” he said, in his primmest newsreel Captain America voice. 

Natasha gave his shoulder another friendly shove. Then she said, “Wait. You said _talking_ about having sex. Does that mean no actual sex yet?”

“Does it affect your bet?”

“Yes.” 

“Better tell Clint not to make the dinner reservations yet,” Steve said. 

“They take reservations a few months out,” Natasha said. 

Steve felt an intense surge of discomfort. “Don’t want to rush things,” he said. 

“What? You wanna put a ring on it first?”

Steve could just imagine the headlines. His stomach twisted up. “No.” 

“Then what are you waiting for?” 

The playful question left him tongue-tied. “Well, I don’t know,” he said, stalling for time. “I want the time to be right. I want…” Natasha was peering at his face. Steve looked at the waves frothing up the beach. “I don’t want to take advantage of him,” Steve said finally. 

“ _Steve_ ,” said Natasha, exasperated. “Have you _met_ Bucky? If you get within a mile of taking advantage of him, he’s probably going to throw you across the room.”

“No, I know,” Steve agreed, feeling suddenly confused, because everything she said was so self-evidently true that he couldn’t understand how he’d forgotten it. “It’s just – we still have so little idea what happened to him with Hydra, or with the Soviets – hell, I don’t even really know what happened to him in that POW camp.” 

The Howling Commandoes who had been held captive there told a few stories about their time in camp – always gussied up to make the whole thing sound like a great lark – and Bucky had always chimed in with his lines on cue. But he never talked about what happened after Zola took him away for medical experimentation, and Steve had never pressed. 

The stuff from the POW camp wasn’t in the medical file Natasha had procured from Kiev, either, although that did contain details about surgeries Zola performed on Bucky while Bucky was in Soviet custody. Bucky’s anesthesia had worn off twice during surgeries, and Steve would have bet his shield that Zola miscalculated the anesthesia on purpose. Not least because there had been one other surgery where Zola operated without giving Bucky any anesthesia at all.

“The medical details alone would make anyone twitchy about being touched,” Steve began. “But he was in captivity with so many different people for so long…”

Natasha cut in. “You’re worried that he was raped.” 

The bluntness of her words startled him. “Yes,” he said, and kicked his foot at an arc of soggy seaweed that straggled along the high tide mark. “I don’t think I can ask him,” he said. 

“He would never admit it,” Natasha said. “Certainly not to you. And I think it would have had to be…” She paused a moment. “Very violent, before he would even think of it as a rape. It’s so much easier when you can rationalize it in your own mind as a choice you made. Something you wanted.” 

The wind had blown down, and the clouds had broken up to let through a few weak rays of sun. “Natasha,” Steve began.

She tilted her head and smiled at him, her hair falling over her shoulder. “In the Black Widow program,” Natasha said, “official policy was that none of us were supposed to be sent on honey trap missions until we were sixteen. If you were younger than that and ended up having sex with a mark…” She shrugged. “Well, that was against official policy, wasn’t it? They hadn’t sent you out for that. Clearly you’d fucked up and it was all your fault, and probably you’d wanted it anyway, you dirty little slut.” 

“Natasha,” Steve said again, more gently. 

Natasha pushed her hair back behind her ear, business-like. The sea breeze immediately tossed it in her face again. “I’m telling you this because this is probably the way Bucky looks at it, if he was raped. So if you ask if he was raped – even if you tell him it’s because you want to look after him – he’s going to hear you asking if he’s…” Her lip curled back from her teeth. “A disgrace to his training. Not least because he would consider any lingering discomfort from past trauma disgraceful in itself. Good agents are comfortable with everything.” 

It wasn’t so very different from the way people would have looked at it in Brooklyn, and Steve was nodding; and then a thought struck him. “Fury once told me you were comfortable with everything,” he said. “Was that true? Or did you think you needed to be comfortable with everything to prove that you were a valuable agent?”

He had surprised her: she gaped at him for a fraction of a second, eons in Natasha terms, before her sarcastic smirk snapped back in place. She pushed her hair out of her face again, and when it still wouldn’t stay, dug a spangled scrunchie out of a coat pocket and twisted it back in a ponytail. “I don’t know,” she said, and the sarcastic smirk slipped again. 

Or no; she had put it aside. They began to walk again. Natasha found a stick of driftwood and trailed it through the sand until it caught on a rock and snapped. “Fury never sent me out on any missions I didn’t feel comfortable with,” Natasha said. “But I wouldn’t have said no if he had.” She tossed the broken piece of driftwood into the waves. “Which I realize probably doesn’t make you feel better about your chances of not taking advantage of Bucky, but you are not his superior officer, Steve. He’s under no obligation to obey you. Just ask what he likes and what he doesn’t like. It’s not like he’s shy about spelling that out. As I’m sure you know.”

Steve couldn’t help a rueful grin. “Yeah.” Of course she was right. Bucky was very clear about what he liked and what he didn’t – much clearer, if he could express his preferences purely in those terms, rather than being cornered into admitting that those preferences might be in any way influenced by trauma. 

Natasha’s voice drew him out of these reflections. “Steve,” she said. “Do you really think you’re going to take advantage of Bucky?”

“Well, like I said. Not on purpose. But he's so traumatized – ”

“And you aren't?” Natasha said, and raised a hand to shut Steve up when Steve made to protest. “No, Steve, I don't want to hear about how you've decided that losing your best friend, freezing to death on a crashed plane, waking up seventy years in the future, and discovering that most of your new friends are secretly Nazis are somehow not traumatic enough to count as traumatizing. You and Bucky are so different, but in some ways you're exactly the same. Neither of you ever thinks that anything is bad enough to count.”

Steve kicked a pebble down the beach. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” he responded. 

Natasha paused, considering. “I think sometimes,” she said, “you project your concerns about yourself onto Bucky. You believe he’s allowed to need care and protection, and you don’t believe the same thing about yourself. So when you say you’re worried about taking advantage of Bucky – do you really mean you’re worried that Bucky will take advantage of you?” 

Steve flinched. “I can take care of myself.”

“Oh, I see,” said Natasha, bitterly mocking. “So anyone who gets taken advantage of, it’s because they can’t take care of themselves? Probably they’re a dirty little slut and secretly wanted it anyway?” 

“Jesus, no. I didn’t mean – I would never– ”

“You’d never blame anyone else for their own victimization,” Natasha said. “Only yourself.” She turned to face him. One of the sequins from her scrunchie caught in a curl that fell by her face. “Steve. No one can always take care of themselves. And even if you could, we both know that sometimes you don’t.” She cocked her head. “Did you and Bucky have sex earlier? After he came in from the cold?” 

His ears roared and his heart pounded. His throat felt too tight to breathe, let alone speak. 

“I’m not going to judge you,” Natasha said. “I guarantee I’ve had sex more ill-advised. When I was fifteen I tried to seduce Andrei Nikolaevich. My first handler, you remember.” She smirked. “He threw me across the room.” 

Steve flinched. “He shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “I mean, he was right to turn you down, but he shouldn’t have – ” 

“Yeah, whatever.” Natasha dismissed it all with a flick of her hand. “Did you and Bucky have sex, Steve?” 

The question came so suddenly that Steve answered, “Yes,” before he had time to think and, having told his secret, there was no more reason to hold back. “Sort of. It wasn’t really sex. But he didn’t take advantage of me. I agreed to everything. It was just – ”

The whole sordid story flowed out of him. The one-way hand jobs. Bucky’s dislike of being touched, his unwillingness to be cuddled afterward. Or before. Or ever. 

Natasha didn’t say much. They walked along the beach together, and she listened and nodded and only asked, “Was he insistent?” 

“No. No, nothing like that,” Steve said eagerly. “He would push me away if I said no. I guess to save face to himself; he hates being rejected. He stopped completely, actually, after I turned him down once. I didn’t even have to ask him to.” He paused. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I bothered you with all this. I said yes to all of it, and it was nearly two years ago. It doesn’t really matter.”

“Steve. Wait. Bucky was using you for sex – ”

“Just hand jobs,” Steve corrected. He slipped on a wet patch of rock and banged the side of his knee painfully, and sat down on a rock.

“For – how long, exactly?” 

“Less than a year,” Steve said. “And it was only once or twice a month usually. It’s not a big deal.”

Natasha sat next to him. “Really? What if Clint treated me like that after the Battle of New York, when he was still struggling with the aftermath of having his free will overridden by Loki’s scepter? Would you have told me it was no big deal?” 

“No, but – ”

“That’s different? Why? Because you think you’re supposed to be invincible?”

Steve clasped his arms around one knee and didn’t speak. After a while he said, “Do you think I shouldn’t have sex with Bucky?”

“Do you want to have sex with Bucky?”

“Yes,” said Steve, because he did. He kicked his heel against the rock. Sand showered off the sole of his shoe. “But that doesn’t mean I should.”

Natasha drew up her legs under her big coat. Only the toes of her boots peeked out under the hem. “I’m assuming he’s offering a more equitable arrangement this time around.”

“Yes,” said Steve. “He said he thought he could be good to me.” He paused, chewing his lip. “He’s changed a lot,” he added, and was relieved when Natasha nodded agreement.

The wind was blowing up again, the clouds scooting back together. “It really hurt you when it didn’t work out last time,” Natasha said.

Steve traced his finger along the bumpy rock. “I thought – you know. Sometimes it seemed like he was getting better. More – responsive.” He lifted his eyes to her, half-smiling. “Wishful thinking. It never lasted. Next time he’d just ignore me again. I could’ve been anyone.” 

“He probably would have preferred it to be just anyone,” Natasha said, and Steve flinched away from her slightly. “I don’t mean that he didn’t like you, Steve. But it sounds like he was using sex as a numbing technique. A way to turn off his feelings. It doesn’t work as well if you like your partner.”

No wonder Bucky turned to back alley blowjobs afterward. So much less opportunity for emotional entanglement. 

“I don’t know if it helps,” Natasha said. “But I doubt he meant to hurt you. I doubt he thought about what effect it would have on you at all.” 

“That – ” Steve stopped to swallow. “That does help. Actually. Thank you.” He picked at the dark lichen on the rock. “Do you think it made him feel better?”

“I think it made you feel like shit,” Natasha responded. “And making you feel like shit is not going to make him feel better in the long run. He said he wanted to be good to you, right?”

Steve lowered his face behind the collar of his coat, because remembering the words, the whole discussion, gave him a stupid dopey smile. “Yeah.” 

Natasha mirrored his posture, face tucked into her coat so just her eyes peeked above the fabric. She smiled at him, the expression visible in the crinkle around her eyes. “You’ve got it bad, Captain Rogers,” she informed him. 

“I always have,” Steve admitted. 

“Then help him be good to you,” Natasha said. “Take as much time as you need. I can wait for Clint to buy me that dinner.” 

“Thank you,” Steve said drily. “I realize you’re making a big sacrifice there.”

“You’d probably better take me to dinner somewhere really nice this trip to say thank you,” Natasha informed him. 

“I’ll keep my eyes open,” Steve promised. 

A cold raindrop hit the back of his hand. He and Natasha both looked up at the dark clouds, then slid off the rock and started heading back down the beach. “Just have fun with it, Steve. I realize fun doesn’t come easy to you – ”

“I have fun,” Steve protested, and kicked some sand at her. “I’m taking you on a road trip! That’s fun.”

Natasha kicked sand back at him. “Sure,” she said. “I’m just saying. You and Bucky both deserve a good time.” 

The rain began in earnest then. Natasha jumped piggyback onto Steve, and he ran them both down the beach to take shelter beneath the wooden staircase back up to the bed and breakfast. The rain poured down outside, spitting through the spaces between the boards. “Mrs. Shevvington promised clam chowder for lunch,” Steve said. “Even if it will be the cream kind.”

Natasha shuddered. “Let’s go on today after all,” she said. “I’m not sure I can face New England clam chowder.” 

“You wanna go to Dum Dum Dugan’s? I’ve been meaning to drop by there to tell him about Bucky.”

Natasha was silent for a moment. “Maybe I should just go back to New York,” she said. 

Steve looked at her. She was looking at the raindrops pattering in the sea, the wind ruffling her hair in her face. “Dum Dum stormed one of the early Red Room facilities with Peggy,” Steve said. “He told me after he saw _Scapegoat_. So he’s not going to – ”

“Offer me cinnamon rolls because someone might mistake me for that awful Romanov girl?” 

She was smiling again, an upturned twist of her mouth. “You’re sure you don’t want to hide out at Clint’s for a while?” Steve said. 

“Yes,” said Natasha. “I need to face this.” 

The rain slowed. A seagull called and skimmed over the water. Natasha’s mouth went flat.

“All those years trying to prove I was a good SHIELD agent,” she said quietly. “The best SHIELD agent. And just like that…”

She trailed off. 

“This sucks,” Steve agreed. “It really, really sucks.” 

She was silent for a while, looking out at the waves. Then she smacked one hand against the stair. “I wish we had any evidence that Abigail Pierce was a Hydra agent instead of just a grieving daughter, so I could do that to her face,” she said. 

“I know,” said Steve. “So do I. It’s so much easier when we can shoot the bad guys.” 

Natasha rested her head against the underside of the stair. She sighed. 

The rain slowed to a drizzle. They climbed the slippery stairs, side by side. “I’d like to meet Dum Dum,” Natasha said. 

“Let’s do it, then,” Steve said. “I’ll drive us on the back roads.” 

“ _I’ll_ drive,” said Natasha. She nudged him with her hip. “After all, you have a lolcat to translate.”

**Author's Note:**

> Steve and Natasha have a non-graphic discussion about sexual assault, including the way that victim-blaming complicates the aftermath.


End file.
